Deception (9 page)

Boom. Boom.

Adam walks by, carrying Willow’s travel bag for her and laughing at something she says. He stops laughing when he catches Logan watching him, but Logan just turns away and starts giving Jodi directions for helping Quinn pack up the weapons.

A few people stand and stare in the direction of the gate, terror rooting them to the ground. I grab their arms and give them a little shake.

“Get your stuff and get into the compound. We can outwit the Commander and his stupid army, but only if we keep our heads. Now go.”

They hurry toward their shelters, and I turn to see who else might need motivating. Logan is already heading up the compound’s steps. Probably to see about bringing the tunnel to the surface. No one else seems to need me to prod them into action. I cast one more glance over my shoulder toward the gate and feel torn. On the one hand, I know we need to be far away from here before the Commander gets into the city. On the other, it would be nice to dip one of my arrows in some sort of slow-acting poison and nail the Commander in the face when he rode up the hill on his horse.

It takes nearly four hours to pack up the camp and get our belongings inside the compound. We move fast, heads down, lips tight, as the constant noise of the battering ram hangs over our heads like a blade. There’s no way to know how much longer the gate can withstand its incessant strikes. The faster we lock ourselves inside, the safer we’ll be.

People stream out of the campsite, following the supply wagons, and head up the steep hill that leads to the compound.

Sylph walks beside Smithson in the middle of the group. Her unruly dark curls bounce against her shoulders with every step, and she smiles at those around her with genuine affection.

I don’t know how she does it. She lost her parents, her grandparents, and her older brother. I know she’s devastated. But instead of closing herself off to mourn her loss, she reaches out to others with an unflinching generosity that both baffles me and makes me envious.

Sylph sees me and leaves Smithson’s side to hook her arm through mine so we can walk up the steep hill together. The air is heavy with the spicy-sweet perfume of apple blossoms and the drowsy buzzing of bees that move slowly through the trees. People walk the packed dirt path in clumps of twos and threes. Most walk in silence.

“I’ve learned a lot in sparring practice,” she says.

“You’re doing well.”

“You hold back with us. I was in the watchtower when the army attacked. I saw you. Saw you fight your way to the gate and then get away from the soldier who grabbed you. You could’ve been killed.”

“But I wasn’t. I’m fine.” I hold my hands up as if to offer proof but drop them to my sides when they start to shake.

I’m many things, but fine isn’t one of them. Not when the man responsible for so much pain still breathes freely on the other side of the Wall.

“I never knew you could do that,” Sylph says, her voice subdued. “Ever since seeing you fight the guards on the Claiming stage, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could be your best friend and still not know something so important.”

I can’t think of anything to say, and the silence between us begins to feel awkward.

“You were always different from the rest of the girls. You thought for yourself. I didn’t mind. In fact, I admired you for it. But I think there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

What can I say to that? We may come from the same world, but her parents obeyed the Commander without question. Mine defied him at any cost. I won’t make apologies for the way I was raised or for the intimacy I sacrificed in our friendship by hiding the truth. I had to protect my father from the consequences of breaking the law. She might understand that, but while I can let her see the girl I really was, I can’t bear to let her see the hollow, silent girl I’ve become.

“Yes,” I say, “I’m different from the other Baalboden girls.”

“I want to learn.” There’s a quiet determination in her voice that takes me by surprise.

“What?” I look at her and find her wide green eyes fixed on me.

“I want to learn how to fight like that. I want you to stop holding back with me. This isn’t the same world we grew up in.” She waves her hands at the blackened streets behind us. “There aren’t Protectors lined up ready to save us. We need to learn how to save ourselves.”

I squeeze her arm closer to me. “It’s nice to have my differences be an asset instead of something that makes me the most unfeminine girl in the room.”

Sylph smiles. “You aren’t unfeminine. You just stink at setting a nice table or sewing a decent dress.”

“I can sew a decent dress.”

“You are the worst seamstress Baalboden’s ever seen. And possibly the worst cook as well.”

“I can cook when I have to,” I say, and return her smile.

“Well, you don’t have to. We need someone who knows how to use weapons and win a fight, and you’re the best girl for the job. I’ll never forget the way you launched yourself into that mess on the Claiming stage. I thought you were going to die.”

“So did I.” I should be trembling at the memory of being surrounded by the Brute Squad and held at the Commander’s mercy, but the ashes of my fury lie cold and silent within me.

She shakes her head. “No, you knew exactly what to do. How to stand up for yourself and win. It was terrifying and amazing.”

“Terrifying.”

“And amazing. Who knew a girl could kill a grown man?”

In the back of my mind, Melkin’s dark eyes beg me to save him as his blood flows hot and sticky over my hands. I shake my head and walk faster. Sylph matches my pace.

After a moment, she says, “I felt foolish, Rachel. All those years of friendship, and I had no idea what you were capable of. You could’ve told me.”

“You would’ve told your mother.” I squeeze her closer to me to take away the sting of remembering her mother’s death. “Not on purpose, but you would’ve told her.”

Her voice catches on a rasp of grief. “Maybe. She could always get the truth out of me.”

I think of the way we used to walk behind her father in the market, whispering our secrets. Whispering
her
secrets. Most of mine were too dangerous to share. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

For still having secrets. For being unable to open up and let her in anymore. For pretending to feel the things I know I should be feeling because inside of me there’s nothing but darkness and the faint voices of those whose blood is on my hands.

“I’m sorry about your family,” I say.

She leans her cheek against my shoulder as we step around a woman whose small child has stopped to chase a shower of flower petals teased from the branches by the late afternoon breeze. “And I’m sorry about your family, too. But I have Smithson, and you have Logan. We have more than most.”

The bouncing, irrepressible Sylph of my childhood is gone. In her place, forged out of fire and loss, is a woman-girl with steady eyes and clear vision. Talking to her is like coming home and finding the furniture in every room rearranged. The same pieces are there, the same sense of comfort, but nothing is exactly where you’d expect.

Ahead of us, a woman struggles up the hill alone, her gait unsteady and her steps slow. Sylph and I lean against each other the way we used to as children when we’d walk through Lower Market, plotting how to get extra sticky buns from Oliver or how to get Corbin Smythe, the cutest boy our age, to notice us.

More apple blossoms whirl through the air as we approach the woman who can barely manage the hill. I’m about to remind Sylph of the time we bribed Corbin to eat lunch with us by promising to give him an entire loaf of raisin bread, but the words shrivel in my mouth as we flank the woman, and I look in her face.

It’s Melkin’s wife, Eloise, waddling slowly up the hill, her hands cupped beneath her swollen belly as if to keep the baby safe inside of her for just a little longer. Her thin brown hair falls down her shoulders in limp strands, and her eyes are puffy with exhaustion or tears. Probably both.

“Let us help you,” Sylph says, and gently wraps her arm around Eloise’s waist.

“Thank you.” Eloise’s voice is a timid, caged thing hovering uncertainly in the air before drifting away. Everything about her seems washed-out and weary. Everything but her eyes.

Her eyes are full of misery and
knowing
. I look away, my cheeks burning as if she’d slapped me.

“Rachel, put your arm around her and help me,” Sylph says.

I can’t touch her with the hands that ripped her husband away from her. I
can’t
.

She looks at me with her tired eyes as if waiting for me to tell her something she already knows, but I can’t speak.

“It’s okay,” Eloise says in her pale, whispery voice. “I know you tried to save him.”

Who told her that lie? I shake my head and try to find the words to contradict her, but my lips stay closed, protecting my secrets even as they rise up to choke me with bloody fingers.

“Rachel?” Sylph sounds baffled. Maybe worried. I can’t look at her to see which is true. I can’t look at either of them.

Melkin’s dark eyes burning with fury, his knife pointed at the ground. The rage that blistered through me when I knew he wanted to take the device and leave me with nothing—no way to destroy the Commander and make my father’s sacrifice count. The flash of silver as I attacked him. A confusion of blows. And Melkin dropping toward me, his face a murderous mask, his sword arm hidden.

My knife. His chest. Blood covering me as I sat horrified. As I let him believe I was Eloise. As I pretended he’d saved her, when neither of us had saved anyone.

“Rachel!” Sylph’s voice cuts through the memory, and something tugs on my arm.

I look down to see Eloise’s small white hand pressing against my arm. My stomach surges, and I snatch my arm away before the bile reaches my throat.

“Are you okay?” Sylph asks, but I’m already moving—striding past citizens, crushing apple blossom petals beneath my boots, and pretending I can leave the ghost of Melkin behind as easily as I can leave his wife.

Chapter Nine

LOGAN

I
spend the evening monitoring the machine’s progress, helping maneuver the wagons down the slick basement steps, which are barely wide enough to accommodate them, and pressuring Jeremiah to hurry up and finish drawing a map of the northern territory.

I also spend it straining to hear any change in the constant rhythm of the battering ram. Any indication that our narrow window of opportunity is gone.

Through it all, I answer innumerable questions—
How will we get the animals through the tunnel?
Blindfold them and lead them.
Are you really going to let girls carry weapons and help guard the camp?
Absolutely.
Shouldn’t we leave now?
Too dangerous.
What if the tunnel collapses? What if the Commander finds us? What if the Cursed One attacks?

What if?

I can’t assure them enough. I can’t explain my plans, argue my points, or reason with panic-stricken people. Not if I also want to make sure the camp is locked down, the wagons are ready, the map is completed, and the tunnel reaches the surface in the right place. My patience feels like a stripped wire ready to snap.

When I find myself tempted to pull a page out of the Commander’s rule book and tell a woman that if she doesn’t like my methods she can stay behind in the dungeon, I ask Drake to keep everyone but the tunnel crew away from me, and I hide in the tunnel’s depths, calculating distances, replacing batteries, and reconfiguring trajectories while the rest of the camp goes to sleep.

The battering ram is still pounding at the gate in regular intervals when I make my way up the basement stairs again. The majority of our people have settled down on bedrolls in the main banquet hall. Most of my inner circle are already sleeping, taking the opportunity to get some rest now in case they’re called upon to handle a crisis later. Even Rachel is sleeping, her bedroll snugged up beside Sylph’s. Their hands are clasped tightly, and I hope it’s enough to keep Rachel’s nightmares away.

Quinn has a pair of guards stationed by the compound’s front door and another pair in the watchtower that rises above the kitchen like a castle’s turret. All of them have one duty: to listen for the battering ram to fall silent.

I pace through the compound checking locks, supplies, wagons, and animals. Making sure the last of the Commander’s explosives are mounted in the right places throughout the basement. Thinking through every possible scenario and doing my best to come up with a solution for each.

The pile of weapons resting against the basement wall catches my eye. Every piece is lined up and ready for one of the survivors to grab it on the way into the tunnel tomorrow. Long swords for the men. Short swords, daggers, and knives for everyone else. Even a few walking sticks for those who need the help. Rachel is proof that a walking stick in the right hands can be a formidable weapon.